


The Things Inside and Underneath

by avawtsn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Jossed, Not series 3 compliant, POV John Watson, POV Mary Morstan, POV Molly Hooper, Post-Reichenbach, Things are not what they seem, everyone is hiding something, it's certainly not a happy fic, that's why it's good to be the audience, things are afoot but no one has the whole picture, twist ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-17
Updated: 2013-12-17
Packaged: 2018-01-03 11:01:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1069694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avawtsn/pseuds/avawtsn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Molly, John, and Mary go to dinner while Sherlock's dead, and everyone has something they're hiding away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Molly

**Author's Note:**

> This work of mine is woefully unbetaed, unbritpicked, and is probably strange and muddy and unnecessary, but I honestly mainly wrote the whole thing to get to a punchline that doesn't deliver until the penultimate paragraph. Whoops. So I hope you put up with Molly stammering, John repressing intrusive thoughts, and Mary being enigmatic til you get there.  
> And also...I know there isn't an A&E at Barts. Sorry about that. I thought about rewriting Mary to be some other kind of doctor but...I really quite liked her as an A&E doctor, and I just kept her as one. And it needed to be Barts so...sorry. Spare some suspension of disbelief, if you would. <3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If he were to just _listen_ to her, he would hear. At any moment, he could locate that odd note in her chest cavity and pull it from her like so much unraveling yarn, and all the secrets of these past months would fall from her like dead leaves in autumn, and Sherlock would _deserve_ it. _She_ would deserve it.

“All roads lead to St. Bart’s,” John says. He sounds exhausted and looks worse. “That’s what it feels like.”

Molly nods, eyes darting to the crack in the pavement before looking back at him. What is there to say to that? It’s just as well; John is staring blankly past her at the automatic doors leading into the A&E entrance, attention focused far and away from her. Molly pulls close the lapels of her buttonless cardigan, although it is hardly cold enough yet to warrant wool. But it gives her something to do with her hands.

“Waiting on Mary again, are you?” Her voice seems to vibrate, threatening to crack. She imagines a bell ringing in her chest, trying to spill her secrets. If he were to just _listen_ to her, he would hear. At any moment, he could locate that odd note in her chest cavity and pull it from her like so much unraveling yarn, and all the secrets of these past months would fall from her like dead leaves in autumn, and Sherlock would _deserve_ it. _She_ would deserve it.

But John doesn’t listen, doesn’t hear, and never asks.

John’s grief is some private, opaque, unshareable thing. Or at least there seems to be no need to cut it open for the likes of Molly Hooper to see, that much seems clear. So instead, he seems to overlook any extra bits of nervousness in her, lost as it apparently is in the white noise of her usual awkwardness. She doesn’t know if that is a relief or not. Either way, the guilt sits with her, humming in her blood.

It is difficult, speaking to John, the one person she feels she would spill everything to if he just confronted her, outright asked her, even hinted at it. But he never does, never has. In the many months of shouldering the heavy responsibility of being Sherlock’s bearer of secrets, avoidance has been her primary method of dealing with the deceit and the guilt. And avoidance had worked out just fine, until John started reappearing at Barts. And now it is the _silence_ that nips at her, the gnawing _nothing_ that spreads out over their stilted conversations. After all this dread, it feels like reverse psychology now to speak with John, which still doesn’t make it easy to talk with him. She feels conflicted about the telling, and the not telling, and the wanting to tell, and the wanting him to ask. She is, in a word, miserable.

The last time she spoke with Sherlock, he was clipped and distracted, brusque and imperious as ever, but his curiosity had snagged on her mention of bumping into John again at Barts, on him having a girlfriend. She imagined, wherever he was calling from, that his eyes snapped up from the phone or photographs or papers in his hands and he finally got a bit of the old laser focus. But then it fell apart just as easily. Sherlock badgered her incessantly about John, about Mary, about John and Mary, until Molly snapped at him that there was no point in acting possessive about a man he abandoned to chase god knows what. And then of course she felt guilty about snapping at him.

Her part in the deception, the lack of answers Sherlock gave her when he sporadically checked in with her, the relief she felt when he confirmed he was still alive, the guilt of carrying on like everything were _normal_ \-- it all feels like a weight sitting in her chest, a tainted sort of air in her lungs that a thousand heaved sighs have been unable to expel. John isn’t suspicious, isn’t angry, isn’t curious. He has had nothing to accuse Molly of hiding and has felt no need to revisit the Sherlock-shaped wound in their lives, so there formed an unspoken truce to not speak of Sherlock when they would occasionally bump into each other. Today was the first time John had even hinted at Before.

“Shift ended half an hour ago, but she’s grabbing a shower before we head out for dinner,” John says, nodding distractedly toward the A&E doors. His gaze is aimed at the hospital but his focus is seemingly lost somewhere in the middle distance. As usual, John doesn’t look like he is looking for a heart to heart with Molly, and silently she feels that increasingly familiar mix of relief and guilt. His gaze snaps up by degrees and he settles into a wider stance, parade rest almost. “Here she comes now.”

Molly turns around to catch the sliding doors closing behind a trim blonde, who is slinging a small duffel over her shoulder. From this distance, the figure is all sleek lines and she moves with easy confidence. Mary catches sight of them and heads in their direction. As she nears, Molly takes in just how well Mary pulls off a certain understated drama: well-loved leather motorcycle jacket and effortlessly plastered-on jeans tucked into complementary ankle-high boots. The sum total of the effect are legs that look interminably long as she strides toward them. And in fact, as Mary comes to a stop, Molly is surprised to find that the other woman’s legginess is some sort of optical illusion; up close, it is apparent that they are nearly the same height.

Molly tamps down the regret of meeting anyone who looks like _that_ while being dressed herself in the chunkiest jumper she owns, chosen carelessly on the way out the door this morning to stave off worksite hypothermia. Molly’s eyes dip shyly down and snag involuntarily on the plain white tee beneath Mary’s jacket. Despite the modest neckline, up close the fabric is fashionably thin and more than hints at a periwinkle bra underneath. Molly feels her mouth go unaccountably dry.

“Hello,” Mary says brightly, arm outstretched. Molly stares dumbly at the offered hand for a moment before scrambling to shake it.

“H-hello,” Molly parrots.

“And hello,” Mary says more softly to John, giving him a quick but rather intimate kiss near his ear. Molly wants to look away but finds herself pegged to the sight by an errant blond curl of Mary’s fringe falling across her eyes.

“Molly, this is Mary Morstan,” John says, pinking slightly and hurriedly attempting to take the duffel to sling over his own shoulder. He certainly looks more animated than Molly has seen him in several weeks, but she can’t examine the change for too long before having to turn to Mary, who is smiling easily at her and patting the pockets of her jacket and jeans. “And this,” John continues, “is Molly Hooper.”

Molly is genuinely surprised to see Mary fish out a pack of cigarettes from some interior pocket of the jacket; she would have bet anything that there was no room in a motorcycle jacket that cut for a pack of cigarettes to hide in.

“Oh of course, I’ve seen you around,” Mary intones, eyes wider with understanding. She slides a cigarette from the pack and slips it between her lips, gesturing back toward St. Bart’s. “You work downstairs in the labs. In pathology? Your keycard is for the basement, but your cardigan says morgue.”

Molly nods, feeling like her cheeks warm of their own volition. She tries desperately for a smile that stays at a flat wattage, rather than one matching this flickering feeling in her gut, oddly familiar. “And you work in A&E, John’s told me.”

A lighter magically appears in Mary’s hand, again from pockets unknown, Molly marvels. With practised ease, Mary flicks it open and holds perfectly still while she lights the cigarette in her mouth. For a moment, she is still as a statue, picturesque and inviting as any magazine spread. When she moves again, she takes a perfunctory drag and nods again. “Guilty as charged. Pleased to meet you, Molly Hooper.”

“Lovely to meet you,” Molly answers, feeling _finally_ like she is accomplishing a decent approximation of a human being in an everyday human conversation. In fact, she is almost positive her smile is very near perfect, but Mary is now smiling sheepishly at John and swatting coquettishly at his sleeve.

“Oh, don’t be like that, John. I had a rough day today,” Mary cajoles. Oh the smoking, Molly realises. Molly feels a bit out of sorts all over again; if this is what Mary looks like when she’s had a rough day, Molly isn’t sure she could look upon her on a good one. “Palpitated the heart of middle-aged barrister for nearly an hour,” Mary says, tones on the verge of smugness. She blows out a puff of smoke into the breeze, where it drifts back toward the building.

Molly flicks her gaze back to John. For just a moment, she thinks she glimpses just the smallest sliver of pain in his expression, but it dissipates like so much smoke around Mary’s lips.

John returns her look. “Feel like a Chinese, Molly? You could come with us to dinner.”

“Oh, no, I--”

“Oh that’s a wonderful idea! Molly, you must come,” Mary interjects. “It’s nothing fancy, the Chinese we go to, but the orange beef is bang on.”

Molly feels her jaw move up and down. Faintly, she thinks the sound must have cut out to the film, because surely a squeaking joint in need of oil would be audible right about now. “I--I, no, I, I can’t really,” she says, thoughts running awkwardly into the next. “I have to make sure there’s enough food in the, uh, automatic feeder for--for my cat Toby--and then come back here to run more samples on Mr. Florio. He’s--he’s got to get sent back to Italy. His body, I mean. He’s dead.” She wonders if she is visibly cringing as much as she thinks.

“All roads lead back to St. Bart’s,” John says. Molly can’t help but look at him, and he in turn has a helpless look deep in his eyes -- deep blue, she is only now recognising. The look shutters off and he glances back at the building.

“Y-yes,” Molly starts slowly, feeling deflated all of a sudden. “I...I suppose I have enough time to grab a bite to eat.”

“Lovely. We’ll have you back in an hour and 15,” John says evenly, blinking his attention back to her. “It isn’t too far from here.”

They start eastward on the road, Mary’s arm looped with John’s. Molly tries to not let herself fall behind them too much.


	2. John

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thankfully, macabre topics haven’t turned John’s stomach around food since he was in sixth form, between medical school, Afghanistan, and being flatmates --
> 
>  
> 
> _No. Stop._

John holds open the door to Lucky Dragon for Mary and Molly, deliberately keeping his eyes from the bottom third of the door handle. Inside, he rattles off his usual order: orange beef, house lo mein, hot and sour soup, spring rolls. And because they are a party of three, he belatedly thinks they should order more food than usual. Mary insists Molly add something she’d like, and she apologetically adds chicken with broccoli to the order. 

They fall into an awkward silence as they take their seats. Mary seems unfazed, but then she usually is, a fact for which John is usually grateful.

Molly looks...uncomfortable. Could be artifact of her being outside the labs for once, outside her comfort zone. Could be that her jumper looks like it’s scratchy as hell, with the way she seems to never stop playing with it. His eyes wander over her fingers, the tension in her lips. 

_Small mouth, no lipstick._

Eyes darting everywhere but to him. John has to wonder if things are just destined to be strained and strange like this with everyone he sees. Not that he sees many people. Since he stopped seeing Ella, Molly’s become the person he sees most outside of Mary, and she won’t meet his eyes over dinner.

 _Let’s have dinner._  

He doesn’t feel much in touch with anyone as of late, floating in and out of his own thoughts and tuning in to check out the autopilot function. But to look at Molly now, it’s as if he’s being intimidating, like she’s bracing for a scolding or interrogation. You’d think he had brought her to an abandoned warehouse instead of a hole-in-the-wall Chinese, ten minutes from her workplace.

 _Flair for the dramatic._  

He looks at his female companions sitting across from him as they chat, and he feels the odd man out at this dinner he’s engineered. The restaurant is moderately busy tonight, the ambient noise high with hissing hotplates and sizzling stirfry. It’s easier for conversation to happen on just one side of the table, and so the women chitchat, mostly about Barts. John zones out just a bit, mind soaking up the white noise of the restaurant, snippets of yelled Cantonese from the kitchen skipping across his thoughts like stones over water.

When the food is ready, John goes to pick it up at the counter. His eye darts away from the lucky cat on the countertop as he throws extra napkins on the tray. When he returns, he tunes back into the women’s conversation and finds them discussing various paperwork involved with living patients vs. cadavers, discharge vs. postmortems. Thankfully, macabre topics haven’t turned John’s stomach around food since he was in sixth form, between medical school, Afghanistan, and being flatmates --

 _No. Stop._  

The food is fresh, piping hot as always and threatening to burn away the styrofoam plates. The orange beef is, as promised, divine, and John forks a spring roll onto his plate. The cabbage in it isn’t much, but sometimes it’s the only veg he ever seems to get into --

 _Stop. Stop this._  

John takes a breath. The lights seem awfully bright in here and he feels a hysterical pang of regret that he hadn’t glanced at the door handle on the way in.

“All right?” Mary asks, head tilting quizzically.

“Yeah, fine,” John answers. “Fine.”

 _Is that what girlfriends do? Feed you up?_  

John breathes. Mary looks at him for a beat longer and then returns to conversation with Molly. He tunes in again: conversation is about the variety of crisps available in the third floor vending machines and how impossible it is to maintain a sensible diet when spending upwards of 60 hours a week in a hospital. John takes care to not freeze up for the remainder of the meal. He eats mechanically, like he were eating sand instead of MSG.

“Well, I never regret Lucky Dragon, but I’m glad you came, Molly,” Mary smiles. Molly blushes and dabs at her lips with a napkin.

They’ve gotten on rather well, John muses, and thank god because he was useless over dinner. Mary is a rather forward type of person, and Molly is easily provoked to crimson. They’d make a somewhat cute couple, John thinks, until he reminds himself he’s actually dating one of the two of them. Bit not good, forgetting that. What happened to the jealous, possessive John of earlier relationships?

 _Hamish. If you’re looking for baby names._  

Could be a platonic couple though, John rationalises. The two of them could become doctors in crime.

_She has life and death emergencies and I write lab reports about it._

“You should come along more often when John picks me up after a shift,” Mary says, something unreadable in her smile. 

“Oh, yes,” Molly stammers out. “If--if I’m not too swamped in the lab, of course. And--and you don’t mind.” Molly looks to him. For some kind of approval? What happened to the jealous, possessive John of Before indeed.

“Of course we don’t mind,” John says.

At some point, Mary excuses herself to visit the loo. John waits until she disappears down the hallway before leaning forward, closer to Molly. Her eyes widen and her shoulders tense.

“Molly.”

“Y-yes.” Molly puts down a forked floret of broccoli. Except that her head is not between her knees, she looks like she is bracing for impact in every way possible.

“I’m thinking of moving in with Mary. Out of 221B.”

Molly’s jaw drops just enough to form a perfect O with her mouth before she recovers herself.

“Oh I see. Well, congratulations!”

The floret finds its way to her mouth, and she stares at him as she chews, every muscle in her face taut with the sort of self-consciousness that can only come from eating deliberately and not wanting to blink.

“I wanted to tell you,” John says. 

A pause in the chewing. Molly swallows. “And...why is that?”

“Because,” he begins, unsure how to get out the sentiment beating at the inside of his chest. “I had no one else to tell. And, well, because you knew him.”

Molly has the look of someone about to cough, but not a squeak escapes her before Mary comes back to the table.

“Oh Molly, you should visit the loo here before you head back to Barts,” Mary says conspiratorially. “The place may be a hole in the wall, but the owner’s daughter has psoriasis and there’s a lovely lotion they keep by the sink, only very lightly scented. Does amazing things for skin that’s been rubbed raw from god knows how many surgery scrub downs we do a day.”

“Oh, I’ll--I’ll check it out,” Molly says, clearing her throat.

“Damn,” Mary says, phone in her hands, its blue glow camouflaging all color from her face. She flicks off the screen and puts it back into her jacket. “My flatmate’s locked himself out, or he’s too rat arsed to find his keys. Either way, I need about half an hour to go and get him into the flat and into bed.”

“Oh no,” says Molly.

“It’s all right,” Mary says cheerfully. “I don’t live too far from here actually. And he’s prone to doing this about once a month. Thank god he’s moving out come summer. You two finish dinner and I’ll text you when I’m done, love, okay?”

She kisses John in her spot again, an intimate patch of cheek remarkably close to his sensitive ears that never fails to put him off-kilter, to pull him back into the world and yet out of his person. She scoots out of the booth again.

“I’ll take my change of clothes back home while I’m at it,” she adds, slinging the black duffel over her shoulder.

John nods. “I’ll walk Molly back to Barts and catch up with you when you’re done.”

When Mary disappears from view, Molly turns slowly back to John, biting her lip thoughtfully. “You look like a good couple. She’s very warm, very smart. She seems good for you.”

John spoons some soup into his mouth and swallows before answering. “Yes, she is.”

The soup is tepid in his mouth.

* * *

 

 

“Did you…” Molly trails off as an ambulance approaches, wails past them, and speeds on toward the direction of Barts. She waits for the sirens to fade away, fingers playing with the collar of her jumper. “Did you want to talk? About Sh--about him?”

John looks up at the sky and wants to laugh. Looking toward the heavens for answers? He is a cliched man, a textbook kind of brokenness with imaginary wounds cured by storybook baritone adventure. Bitter is what he is. 

_Bitterness is a paralytic._

“Is--is that why you wanted me to come to dinner?” Molly adds.

“I just,” John says, shaking his head. “I just felt like I was--am--making a decision that leaves a certain part of my life behind me, I guess. And I just wanted to say something. To someone.”

 _The stuff that you wanted to say but didn’t say. Say it now._  

John can’t make sense of his life. It’s always starting over again. Doctor to soldier to consulting flatmate to utterly flat, completely civilian walking cliche. And boyfriend. Mary’s boyfriend. And at this point, he isn’t sure what string of words he can offer up to Molly about the kind of validation he’s looking for, when he has no hope at all that she might make sense where he hasn’t.

“I don’t see Mike as much as I see you at Barts. Haven’t spoken to him for months. Family man, I suppose he doesn’t get out as late as you or Mary. I don’t see Greg…” John trails off, unsure of what it was that put him off from Greg exactly. He had gotten over the betrayal at the end, the trumped up arrest, too exhausted to really maintain the rage over a bad arrest when John had been the lone recipient of the suicide “note.” The weight of that had crushed him. By the time of the funeral, it had felt like John had left behind fury for everyone but himself. And that, he kept to himself.

“There’s nothing left to do but to move on,” he finishes.

“And so,” Molly sounds out slowly. “You wanted to tell me so you could...say goodbye? To...that part of your life?”

That sounded plausible. John really doesn’t know anymore. He has no one to talk to and nothing makes sense. He can barely think in 221B, and being alone anywhere is like waiting to drown.

 _Alone protects me._  

He’s been needing to get out for months, but he’s been paralyzed there until Mary came along.

But moving out. Moving on. Saying goodbye. The thought dizzies him, and he isn’t sure if he feels better, like weight is more evenly distributed across his bones, or the the weight is fusing to his pressure points and he’s just grown used to it.

“Maybe,” he says.

They stop along the road where the cars pull in to pick up patients. Outside Barts again. Molly steps between him and the hospital.

“She’s good for you,” Molly says, a bit resolutely. “She’s helping you move on. We all need to move on.” She pauses, chewing her lip. “Moving on is good.”

Molly doesn’t say it, but what she means is that dwelling on the past is bad. John can read that subtext at least. John lives that subtext.

“So it is.” John leans forward and plants a chaste kiss on Molly’s cheek. “Thank you for coming to dinner.”

Molly smiles. She is a bit flush, but the smile painted on her looks sad. For a moment, John imagines this was exactly what he wanted out from Molly: this freeze-frame picture of a sad smile, no one asking about it, no one elaborating on it, no one saying his name.

“We should do it again sometime,” she says.

“We should,” John returns. For a beat, they share a wordless look. Then Molly readjusts her cardigan, turns, and walks toward Barts.


	3. Mary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was nice to get away from that stilted fucking sulkfest of a dinner, but she was damned if she was going to let anyone else know she was glad to be torn away from it.

Her roots need a retouch. The highlights _and_  lowlights a revisit. Being a blonde: completely obnoxious. Never again. It’s getting to be a bit obvious, she thinks, fingering strands of her hair in the reflection of the shop window. She can probably get that done Tuesday next and simply be available by text only. Honestly, what is the point of being a boss if underlings can’t be trusted to _breathe_ on their own, for fuck’s sake? Heavy is the head.

Take tonight, for instance. It was a breath of relief to get away from that stilted fucking sulkfest of a dinner, but she was damned if she was going to let anyone else know she was glad to be torn away from it. She takes a long drag from her cigarette and types out a text.

> _In front. Come downstairs in 15s or I’ll garrote you in your sleep._

She slips this phone in the inside pocket of her duffel. Ten seconds later, there are footsteps, and then the door opens, revealing her broad-chested “flatmate” wearing a positively wicked grin on his face. Mary flicks the cigarette to the kerb and steps in behind him.

Inside, the hallway is painted a mauve-pink sort of shade that is at once muted with filth and garish in its loudness. They ascend the stairs in silence and then step into the third door down the hallway. The other flats were empty, but this one was the easiest to establish a perimeter on.

It is a bare little flat, mostly empty except for a couple utilitarian chairs pulled up to a wooden kitchen table, which takes up half the living room where a TV would normally be. In front of that is a beat up sofa and a coffee table, cluttered with snaking charging cables, AC adapter bricks, and a combo broadband modem and router, absurd little antenna sticking up out of it. Half a dozen laptops and smartphones are strewn about on the coffee table, and a formfactor desktop PC with two monitors are set up on the kitchen table. Next to that, the remnants of Chinese takeaway.

“If that’s takeaway from Lucky Dragon, so help me, you will regret it,” she shoots him a menacing look.

“I had Milos pick it up, don’t worry,” he says, hands held up in mock surrender. His grin has not lost a single ounce of brightness. He looks mischievous, practically lascivious, like the photographic prelude to a session in bed with a favourite toy. She wills her eyes not to dilate and growls instead.

“If this isn’t good, I’ll still garrote you in your sleep, you know. I was in the middle of dinner with John,” she says in low tones, but the gleeful look on the man’s face is inflating her sense of anticipation.

“Oh, it’s good,” he says easily. “I knew you’d want to see this for yourself.”

He walks to the couch and bends to pick up one of the phones. He thumbs it on, swipes to find what he was looking for, and presents it to her. Mary blinks as she adjusts to the glowing shapes on the screen. And then she sees it.

It was a lucky shot, taken in a hurry, almost everything in frame a blur. But dead center in this crowded streetview snapshot, there is a figure of a man that grabs her attention. Hair tucked into a black knit beanie, an almost fashionably thick scarf wrapped around the neck and obscuring his face. The rest of his clothes are dark and shabby, like a nondescript homeless man attempting to cross the street in a sea of more upstanding citizens. But it was dumb luck that the crowd had parted just in front of him to give nearly a full body view to the camera, with the man giving an unwitting three-quarters profile as he looked behind him. But now that her attention is focused, Mary sees the telltale bodily keening of a man cradling an injury on his right side. It’s  obscured but obvious even in the puff jacket he’s wearing. And most damning of all are the facial highlights. Very little other than a full balaclava could ever do much to hide those preposterous cheekbones.

She suddenly craves another cigarette.

“Prague,” the man says. “Three days ago.” He lets his grin take its full measure of smugness when she looks up at him. Fine then, less garroting on the table, more session in bed with a favourite toy.

“Seb, this _was_ good to bring it to me,” she breathes, feeling almost reverent of the phone in her hands. “Now we can move up the timetable.”

She looks back at the phone, screen now at half-glow and threatening to shut off. Her mouth curves up into a small, secret smile. The most dangerous woman in London rarely moves up her timetables for anyone, but this is an exception she has been looking forward to making. It was a lucky shot indeed.

“Sherlock Holmes is returning to London.”

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm just trying to wrap my head around anyone actually reaching these end notes, but if you've read this far, I thank you. Really. I hope this wasn't too bad for an early attempt at fic. This really is one of my first tries, and I rather weirded out myself that I wound up writing this headfuckery sort of story instead of smutty johnlock, but there ya go. I had an idea to write from Molly and Mary's POVs and I came away with this. If you have any feedback, I will try to have some tough skin for it. You can leave a comment or find me on [tumblr](http://avawatson.tumblr.com) if you prefer.


End file.
